Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t a fervent advocate of formalism like Scalia, but he’s broadly in sympathy with Scalia’s philosophy. In his confirmation hearing in 2005, he famously described his job in baseball terms: Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.
